Still Alive
by SigmaTheta
Summary: Vasquez and Gorman drink to their survival, to the ones who weren't so lucky, and to whatever the hell comes next. (Post-movie AU. Written for Yuletide 2016.)


Vasquez was supposedly still on restricted movement and confined to her room down at medical, but she was now sitting at the small table there instead of resting calmly in her hospital bed as she was supposed to be. Her injured leg, tightly wrapped from ankle to knee, was propped up on a stool beside her, and she had somehow acquired a bottle of something that almost certainly shouldn't be mixing with whatever drugs they had pumped into her. Then again, it wouldn't really surprise him if she had forgone pain meds entirely in favor of the self-medication route.

Gorman took all of this in, then knocked politely on the wall beside the open door before stepping into the room. Though he was a commanding officer in name only by this point, he had still taken it as a personal duty to check in on each of the other survivors of their disastrous mission, and this was, by virtue of his own reluctance, the last stop on his list.

Vasquez looked up, and her eyebrows lifted slightly in surprise at the sight of her visitor. "Hey, Sleeping Beauty's up again," she said. "They decide you're not any stupider now than you were before?"

Hypersleep could be a touchy process when it came to head injuries, and Gorman had spent a further two days beyond their quarantine period under observation to ensure a lack of permanent brain damage. He rubbed at the bandage on his forehead and shrugged. "I guess so." He gestured vaguely in her direction. "How are you doing?"

The slight smirk that had accompanied her opening jab faded. She tapped her finger against the glass of pale liquid in front of her, then picked it up to take a drink. "Still alive, so doing better than most people I know." She shook her head and smacked her palm against the table beside her. "I'm not gonna be standing up to meet you anytime soon, so you better have a seat instead."

He hesitated in the doorway, already taking half a step back out into the hallway. "I don't want to bother you. Just wanted to check in with everyone."

Vasquez rolled her eyes and muttered something in Spanish that he was probably happier not understanding. She kicked the remaining chair out from under the table with her good leg and said, "Just sit, you asshole."

A Marine knew an order when he heard one. Gorman walked over and sat down, though he was puzzled by her insistence. They may have wordlessly agreed to put aside conflict long enough to get home alive, but he'd been under the assumption her tolerance for his company wouldn't extend much beyond that.

Of course, they had almost died together. He supposed that changed a few things.

She smirked again and raised her glass toward him in a mock toast before downing the rest of the drink. Then she refilled it and slid it across the table towards him.

He fumbled to catch the glass before it skidded right off the edge, and when he picked it up, he eyed the contents skeptically. The label on the bottle said tequila, but the smell was more suggestive of paint thinner. He stalled. "Are we celebrating, or…?"

She huffed impatiently. "Shit, Gorman, I don't know. We're just drinking to drink." She grabbed the bottle by the neck and frowned down at it, falling silent for a moment. "Here's to us for making it out of that hellhole alive," she said eventually, lifting the bottle, "and to everybody else who went down fighting like a tiger." She tipped it back and took a long swallow.

He could hardly refuse to drink to that. He lifted his glass and knocked it back quickly, suppressing a shudder at that first, unpleasant burn in his throat. When Vasquez held the bottle out to him, he passed the glass over and let her fill it back up, and then they really were drinking just to drink.

After a while, Vasquez set the bottle down and leaned back in her chair with a weary sigh. "What the hell do we do after this?"

He looked down at his hands on the table, encircling his glass. Most of their team were dead, Bishop was damaged well beyond standard repair, Hicks was probably going to lose his eye, and Weyland-Yutani would almost certainly do everything in their power to make life difficult for Ripley and the girl. And there was no telling what exactly was going through Vasquez's head right now. Gorman responded to the only part of that question he had an answer to, "I'm resigning my commission."

Silence. Then: "Damn, I'm sure you just needed one more real good disaster under your belt before you got the hang of it."

That startled a laugh out of him, and he spent a few seconds choking on his drink before he could say anything in reply. "I guess you wouldn't be first in line for my next command."

"Couldn't even if I did have that death wish," she said. She tapped her knuckles against her knee, just above where the bandages ended. "This leg is good for one free medical discharge with honors."

Gorman straightened up in his chair. "The doctors couldn't fix it?"

"Not enough," she said, tugging the loose fabric of her hospital pants up to better inspect the edge of the binding. "That acid shit really fucked it up. They said I'll probably walk again, but not good enough for combat, and I'll slit my goddamn throat if they try to turn me into a desk jockey."

"I'm sorry."

She shrugged, and the gesture was probably more aggressive than she intended it to be. "The payout's gonna be pretty good, at least. Need to find something else to do, though. I get myself in trouble when I'm bored." She kicked the leg of his chair. "You got any ideas?"

Gorman had only the vaguest notion of what he was going to do after his own military service, and he felt deeply unqualified to give any sort of advice to someone like Vasquez. "Private security?" he suggested hesitantly.

She let out a short bark of laughter. "Shooting things is what I do best," she agreed. "But I don't think I want to go to whatever shithole planet some big business points me at anymore. I'll have to start my own company." Gorman raised an eyebrow and said nothing, but she punched him in the shoulder anyway. "Don't give me that look, _pendejo_. It's a great idea. Always wanted to be my own boss."

He was definitely feeling the alcohol now, because his mind helpfully supplied an image of Vasquez in a business suit and it was enough to make him tip his head back and laugh out loud. It was strange enough just seeing her in the hospital clothes instead of fatigues and battle armor. He wasn't surprised when she punched him again.

"Yeah, and what are your big plans?" she asked, challenging.

He bit his tongue to stop himself laughing and shook his head. "I have some…options," he replied vaguely.

"Yeah, right," she said, calling his bluff immediately. "Quit being an asshole, and maybe I'll hire you. And I won't put you in charge of anything."

"Fair enough." It was probably the best job offer he'd get for quite a while.

Appeased, Vasquez settled back down in her chair. She shifted her injured leg with a grunt of annoyance and reached for the tequila again. "We'll figure something out," she murmured, taking a gulp and then passing it on. He raised his glass to that as well.

Together they drank down to the end of the tequila, and then, grinning, Vasquez produced another bottle she'd smuggled in somehow from the military-issue duffel under her chair and cracked that one open too.

It was a good thing that they were both already in the process of leaving the Corps, as the chain of command would probably have something to say about Gorman passing out drunk in his subordinate's hospital room in the middle of the day.


End file.
